AI will gain against humans
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the heart of our daily lives. However, it is not a technology like any other, nor a simple technical progress, because it is an intelligence that aims to be as efficient and sometimes better than humans. For humans, artificial intelligence has long been synonymous with autonomous robots which, either in the catastrophic version, would come to annihilate human beings or, in the utopian version, would come to relieve them of their most difficult and ungrateful tasks. If this last futuristic idea is beginning to materialize in multiple forms, artificial intelligence has already largely invaded our lives.
Artificial Intelligence would not be what it is today without the work carried out by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Companies that share a common desire to develop artificial intelligence are at the cutting edge of technology. All of them collect millions of pieces of data every day through their activities such as: Search, YouTube or Gmail.
This data handles to improve the services through which they are collected using Deep Learning and also to create new ones that we now use on a daily basis. It is therefore mainly thanks to these initiatives that artificial intelligence has ended up coming out of the laboratories of the largest information technology groups to meet the general public. Virtual assistants such as Siri at Apple are becoming increasingly integrated into everyday devices (computers, watches, speakers etc…).
In less than a decade, computers, which until then had merely replaced our office equipment, communication devices, etc., began to compete for the capabilities of the human brain. In recent times, deep learning algorithms have surpassed human performance in classifying images, identifying defective parts etc. They are even able to beat the world champions of the game of Go. Indeed, Artificial Intelligence beat for the second time, on Thursday, May 25, 2008, the best player in the world of Go. Yves Demazeau, director of research at the CNRS and a specialist in artificial intelligence, explained to the AFP, “The machine’s victories in the game of Go make a lasting impression, because it is the most complicated game that man is capable of conceptualizing”. Nowadays, Artificial Intelligence is even capable of correctly translating texts, recognizing faces, driving cars, holding a conversation, etc… What would you think if I told you that AI could totally replace us and that you could totally live in a society, where Artificial Intelligence is not a science fiction dream? In reality, this society is not far from it. Indeed, thanks to Deep Learning robots are getting smarter and smarter with better image recognition. In fact, autonomous cars are able to recognize a stop sign or to differentiate a pedestrian from a street lamp. With this example of daily life, AI shows us that it can replace us in daily tasks.
If with social networks, humans have never been so isolated, imagine with personal assistance as in the movie “Her”. The worst thing is that Artificial Intelligence isolate us through social networks, but they are also there to help us not to be alone anymore. We, humans, will become powerless in front of these robots. Nowadays we don’t use our brain anymore. Indeed, we are using our phone as a substitute for our minds. For example, the contact app of our phone is a substitute for our memory, in the same way as the calculator of our phone is a substitute for our math stimulation. We have with our phone, a mini brain that is almost perfect in knowing how to do almost everything. Moreover, nowadays Artificial Intelligence encourages us to do nothing more.
One day, we won’t be able to do things that were commonplace on the screen. We will have lost the initiative and the ability to do them. Artificial intelligence can help us in our daily life however, it could do us more harm than good.
